


Duality

by MegumitheGreat



Series: Shameless Mitchentine what-ifs, inserts, and fixes [6]
Category: The Walking Dead (Telltale Video Game)
Genre: Antagonism, Confrontation, F/M, No Plot/Plotless, One Shot, Self-Indulgent, What-If, scene insert
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-26
Updated: 2019-05-26
Packaged: 2020-03-17 13:54:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18966583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MegumitheGreat/pseuds/MegumitheGreat
Summary: Mitch meets James





	Duality

**Author's Note:**

> Mitch never got to meet James...oh my, what...? Am...Am I using my fanfic powers? To make it be??? This is weak as hell, but the idea worked better in my head and James and Mitch are like complete opposites (as per both meeting James and burning Ms. Martin).

It wasn’t every day that Mitch went out alone to go hunting or fishing. His hand was cramping from messing with his bomb again; it had been happening a lot more recently. He thought it was probably because he was working without noticing when the pain would start. The pain was only part of the reason why he wanted to go out.

Clementine, strangely enough, offered to come along with him wherever he went to further foster their newly repaired friendship. He, however, declined her. Above all, he had wanted a break from the butterflies in his stomach whenever she was near, and not focusing on his bomb always made the nervousness worse because it just needled him. He wasn’t ready to say anything to her about it. Not yet anyway. He wanted to make sure the bomb was functioning before sealing his fate and confessing to her.

Mitch tried to act tough and mighty, and during times of action, it was fine and even necessary. Since Clementine had come to stay with them at Ericson, he’d gotten softer. So, this little excursion of his was more a reflection and return to form. Walkers were walkers. They had to fight to survive and survive to fight. Clementine wouldn’t be able to protect herself all the time.

“Dammit,” he muttered as he headed out of the gate. “Just for an hour, can I just not think about her? Fuck, man…”

Still he carried on, lost in thoughts of everything but Clementine out of sheer willpower. He looked around the woods at the traps and spots of old blood from where animals had been killed for food. He wondered about adding nails and glass to the bomb—they could attempt to injure the raiders with shrapnel or something. He kept walking.

And walking.

And walking.

And walking.

And walking until he came to a simple campsite out a few paces from the edge of the safe zone west of the school. He simply kept on going without noticing while he was busy thinking about all that was weighing on his mind.

The campsite’s firepit still had embers, which was odd since it was the middle of the day. A fire wasn’t necessary at this time unless…

“Someone was eating here,” Mitch investigated. He carefully shuffled the burnt sticks and the remains of some sort of meat. “Looks like this person also found our river. Explains why the fish haven’t been biting.”

He carefully explored the site some more. There wasn’t much of anything else. No clothes, no other evidence of food, no weapons. The person travelled light—a smart decision. He had to commend this person on keeping that in mind. Aside from the barren site, nothing else offered any clues to who the person was.

Mitch left the campsite, heading back in the direction he came. He continued walking for a bit until the midday heat started to get to him, so he took a break on a moderately-sized rock. He had really gone a far way from the school, and while his head was cleared of his worries about his bomb and gaining Clementine’s validation, the discovery of the campsite made him anxious. What if it was someone from the raiders group? If what Marlon had been doing was true and there were bigger and stronger people than him out there trying to catch all of the kids, then it was definitely possible that it was someone like Abel or Lilly though he hadn't met the latter. No one was there to see how frightened he had become, which at least granted him some peace of mind.

He needed to get back home, he felt it in his bones. He picked himself up from where he had taken his break. His first few steps had snapped a few sticks and twigs, bringing about the low rasping breaths—gasps more like—of walkers. There were only about four of them, and they were thankfully well off the path to the school. He had his shiv and his bow and arrow; he could take them. Walkers were no problem for him at all. He carefully stepped to one. As quickly as he could, he rammed the blade of his knife into its skull. He yanked it out before running back a little more to put some distance between him and the tiny crowd. Then he noticed that one of the walkers looked very different. Walkers were still relatively humanoid, but the one that was speeding toward him looked like an ogre. The face wasn’t rotted away, and its clothes weren’t tattered. It was gaining on him, faster and faster, and he drew back on his arrow after frantically nocking it, but the strange nature of this walker was so disturbing that he uncharacteristically froze.

The walker placed its hand over his mouth and calmly disarmed him. Mitch’s eyes grew wide at the prospect that this walker could _talk_.

“Distract,” the walker said.

“What…the…fuck?” Mitch whispered into the gloved hand.

The walker took their hand from him and picked up a rock without a sound. They threw it in the opposite direction, which took the walkers elsewhere from the direction of the school and from the campsite.

“Follow,” the mysterious walker commanded. Then they hobbled back to the campsite.

Mitch felt like he should have just gone back to the school. Whoever this person was, he had no business messing with them. But what if this _was_ a raider? He could just kill them now and protect his family. He followed the walker.

When he arrived at the campsite, he saw not a walker, but a living person. A boy just slightly older than him. He had a kind face but of which also lacked emotion. Mitch was wary of him, especially when this boy asked him to sit. He offered him a slightly bruised apple, to which he declined.

“You’re…from…the school…” the boy said.

“Yeah, so what?” Mitch replied.

“Clementine…did her boy get help?”

“Yeah.” Mitch looked a little troubled when he answered. He had been the one that was against using their medicine on AJ. He had been the one that still held a grudge against Clementine for letting Marlon die at the hands of the boy, but that had all changed after her help in the greenhouse. “How do you know Clem?” he asked him suspiciously. What if he was competition?

“Saved her.”

“What? What do you mean by that?”

The boy stared down at the embers on the firepit until Mitch realized that he was the one that Willy had seen with her. He stood up from the shock of that realization.

“You’re the one that brought them back to us,” Mitch kept repeating. He didn’t want to thank him, but he was secretly happy that he met the person that had helped Clementine. “You shouldn’t have brought her back,” he hissed. He had to betray those feelings!

“Would have died…” the boy said.

“I-It would have served her right! After what she and that kid did to Marlon…”

The boy looked disappointed. He explained that he had watched her kill his walkers indiscriminately when he rescued her. It broke his heart because he didn’t view the walkers as monsters. They were something in between those that were alive and those that were dead. Mitch sucked his teeth at that notion.

“Walkers are walkers, there’s nothing in between,” he spat at him. He grimaced at the boy. “Who the hell are you, anyway?”

“James.”

“Lame name, James.” Mitch crossed his arms and pouted. Off to the side, he mumbled out, “At least Clem’s name is pretty cool.”

James again looked let-down that Mitch had insulted the name he hadn’t used in years, yet he was more upset about his persistence that walkers weren’t anything but. Clementine had been gracious enough to distract the walkers without killing them when he had asked her not to. He couldn’t tell what Mitch would do, and he had an inkling that he would be the harsh opposite of Clementine. He thought he would at least try to get him to understand.

“Walkers are…still people…” James quietly, shyly, cautiously said.

“Yeah, right! They’re just monsters. They aren’t anything we need to feel sorry for,” Mitch retorted.

“Have you ever tried to understand them?”

“I’m no zombie whisperer, dude. Fuckers are a plague, and the only thing worse than them are the _mother_ fuckers trying to hurt my friends.”

“What are you going to do?” James asked him. His face changed, finally showing concern for his precious walkers. “Please…don’t hurt walkers…”

“Shut up,” Mitch barked at him. “Walkers are killing us! I’m going to do whatever I need to to make it back home. I won’t let them get Willy or Tenn or Clem or anyone in the school.” He punched his fist, unsure if he was frustrated that he wanted to help Clementine or determined to make sure that he could.

James’s eyebrow stitched a moment with worry that Mitch was going to be a bad influence on AJ. And if Willy and Tenn were also still very young and impressionable, he wanted to make sure they knew that they didn’t have to kill people or walkers to survive.

“Why do you…kill them…?” James asked. Mitch turned to him, arms crossed and chest puffed out. “It doesn’t…have to be like that…” James stood up. “It’s possible to live a simple life…without violence.”

“Give me a break! What are you, an idiot? We can’t live avoiding fights. It’s kill or be killed, dumbass.” Mitch’s eyes narrowed, letting out a sigh. “We don’t have the time or luxury to not fight.”

“But you do…if you make the effort.”

“Oh? And how do I make that effort? By letting everyone fuck us over?”

James was startled by the sharp words. He didn’t know this person outside of their mutual acquaintance in Clementine, and though they were essentially the same height, Mitch had a bigger build. He wouldn’t fight back if the angry youth decided to punch him in the face or knock him out, so he began to take extra care in how he spoke to him.

“You don’t know what it’s like,” Mitch sighed. “Having your leader betray you by trading your friends for a few extra days to live. Watching your leader pretend to be your friend and then getting his brains blown out of his head. Being forced to make up with the person that let it happen…and then…spending some quality time with her…and trying to be nice…”

James listened to him, sympathetic but otherwise unconvinced. He noticed that Mitch’s face softened as embarrassment tinted his cheeks pink. “You could try…to be nice…to the walkers…”

Mitch scoffed at him. He walked to the edge of the campsite area. The sun was gold, and dusk would be coming soon. He needed to get back to the school before it got dark. The other thing was that he was nervous about spending too much time with James. Sure, he had helped Clementine and AJ, but nightfall made even the best of fighters much more vulnerable, and he had no intention of fighting them off.

“Are you going back?” James asked him as he stood from the log he had been sitting on.

“Why, are you going to follow me?” Mitch asked him accusingly.

“I can help you get back.”

“No, thanks.”

“I don’t trust you not to kill walkers on the way.”

“I’ll do what I have to.”

Mitch left the campsite and James, whom clearly was upset by him. He kept his eyes peeled for walkers, and while they rarely ventured so close to the school, he knew that he would be in grave danger if he ran into any. He couldn’t get his encounter with James out of his head. Who ever heard of sparing walkers? It was a silly mentality to have, and it was incredibly dangerous. He thought about his boys getting bit because of such a sorry philosophy, his stomach churning over and over at the idea of having to put them down as a result.

He was grateful that James had saved Clementine and also avoided drawing attention to her even if he told him that he had wished he didn’t. He felt bad for saying something so terrible, especially when he conceded that they needed her, especially having been impressed and growing to respect and admire her. He had learned a little of her past as well.

“Dammit, Clementine doesn’t think there’s anything more to walkers, does she?” he grumbled. “No way, she’s not stupid. That James guy is stupid.”

He sighed. What if Clementine _did_ believe that they had souls still? What if walkers were trapped in an eternal purgatory in which they could only watch the husks of their former selves eat humans on sight?

“N-No, stupid!” he chided himself. He had a philosophy that was a stark contrast to James’s. “Kill walkers. Get it over with; it’s easier that way. If you get hung up on every single person, you lose sight of what’s in front of you.” He took a seat on a stump. “No one likes killing walkers, but we have to if we want to survive.”

“Mitch?” Aasim’s voice came. Ruby, Willy, and Clementine were behind him. “What are you doing out here?”

“I went out to do some hunting and lost track of time,” Mitch lied. “Wasn’t anything to hunt around here, so I went out past the safe zone.”

“You know that’s dangerous to do by yourself!” Ruby lightly scolded. “Everyone started getting worried, you know!”

Willy looked at him with a bittersweetly relieved face. He was upset that he had been gone for so long, but he was happy to find him safe. “Omar’s getting dinner ready, so let’s hurry up and go back!” he said excitedly, the dream of a full belly bringing a toothy grin to his lips.

Clementine just watched him with a smaller smile. Mitch met her eyes for just a moment before looking away. He wanted to talk to her about James, but he felt that it would be strange to just ask if she agreed with his theory. He walked with them, staying at the back of the group with their strategist.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” Clementine told him. Unbeknownst to him, she liked to poke at him just to see him blush. And he did. “Were you really out hunting? You…look the same kind of dirty as you usually do.”

“Thanks,” Mitch sarcastically said. He held her back a little farther from the others. “I met James.”

“Oh?”

“I wandered a little too far and ended up finding his camp.”

Clementine didn’t say anything. Mitch didn’t say anything more about the meeting either, prompting her to peek at him from the corner of her eye. Why bring it up if he wasn’t going to talk about it? It wasn’t like Mitch to not talk, though she had to wonder if there was something more to the meeting. She didn’t pressure him to speak, though, figuring that maybe there was something about it that he didn’t want the others to hear. She was just glad that he was back with them. The five of them walked on back to Ericson.

**Author's Note:**

> Real talk though, IF James met Mitch and learned just how "bad" of influence he was on Willy and Tenn, pretty sure he'd probably fight (and own) Mitch's ass. Like Mitch is tough, but that DUAL-WIELDING boy.


End file.
